milliways_bar | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

Jay wanders in from his door looking comfortingly rough - cut off shorts, no shirt, no shoes and a week's worth of stubble.

He grabs a shaving kit and a straight razor from the bar and vanishes into the bathroom, reemerging a few minutes later looking clean and content.

You can finally him sitting on the back step with a bottle of beer, cleaning and sharpening the razor.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"If you don't mind a Viking griping about love?" Ragnar says

"Not even slightly." Jay assures him, making himself comfortable to listen.

"Where to start?" Ragnar says, taking a swig of his beer. "I love him, but I can't help him. Everything is wrong."

"You don't have to tell me but I'm guessing he went through something terrible? And he's still finding ways to deal?" He guessed as much but has made a point not to ask.

"And he's not healing the way both of you feel like he should."

"We both hoped he would get better when we were together in here again," Ragnar says, in a rather small voice. "And now we think it will happen when we are together again in our world..."

"There's no silver bullet." Jay shakes his head, realising that won't make sense to a Viking. "No magic cure. Not for trauma like that. It takes time and it's not always going to get better all at once. Not even somewhere safe and familiar. Doesn't mean you, or he, are failing each other."

"He seems to think he's failing me by not getting better, and I would be better off without him," Ragnar says, quietly. "But what I want most is him back in my life, at whatever condition."

"I guess all you can do it tell him that. And let him know that you're willing to be there, whatever he needs. Even if he doesn't know what that is."

"It needs a lot of patience," Ragnar agrees. "But he is worth the wait."

"It's hard but you gotta make the most of every day you've get rather than focusing on an outcome. The more pressure either of you put on being better, the harder it is to feel when things are better. You only ever see that things are better in hindsight. Make sense?"

"Yes," Ragnar says. "But how can I keep him from putting that pressure on himself?"

"Just talk to him, let him know you love him for who he is, not who he was before this happened. As much as you both may want that person back, it doesn't work like that. You make a new life from where you stand and go forward, not back."

Ragnar listens, and nods. "I want him as he is," he says. "He's still Athelstan whom I love. If he had lost a bit of his body in battle, as men do all the time, I wouldn't love him any less, either."

"Tell him that. Just like that." Jay nods.

"I will," Ragnar says. "I hope he can hear me and believe it."

Edited 2016-08-08 09:58 (UTC)

"I've... been through some bad shit myself. If he needs someone to talk to..." He leaves that sentence open. "You too."

"Thank you," Ragnar says and sips his beer.

"Stealing that bike was one of the best bad ideas I ever had," he then declares.

Jay laughs. "You're just very lucky it wasn't one of the high powered bikes or it would have killed you rather than making us friends. After I kicked your ass."

"That one had enough power for me," Ragnar says, grinning

"More than enough, I'd say. But drunk logic will do that to you."

"Drunk logic told me I can ride it, and I should better try while drunk so I wouldn't try to think," Ragnar admits.

"At least your drunk brain knew what it was doing with the bike. Mostly."

Jay takes a long draft of his beer. "I should go for a ride while I'm here. Maybe take one of the bikes back. There's some good trail riding in Cambodia."

"It knew," Ragnar says, "until such time that it didn't, and landed us all in the lake. What is Cambodia like?"

"Hot, humid. Deeply, deeply green. It's mostly jungle. I've parked the boat up a tributary of one of the rivers."

"Don't bikes get problem with rust there?"